iTunes sells 150 million tunes, Apple to hold mini-store press event

Just hours prior to a press briefing on its mini-store strategy, Apple announced that music fans have gobbled up 150 million songs from its industry leading iTunes music store.

Apple on Thursday announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 150 million songs from the iTunes Music Store. The 150 millionth song was â€œEx-Factorâ€ by Lauryn Hill and was purchased by Beth Santisteven from Ignacio, Colorado.

iTunes users are now downloading more than 4 million songs per week, a rate of over 200 million songs per year. Apple also announced the immediate availability of iTunes gift cards at all Best Buy stores.

â€œCrossing 150 million downloads marks another major milestone for the online music business,â€ said Eddy Cue, Appleâ€™s vice president of Applications. â€œWeâ€™re looking forward to bringing iTunes to even more music lovers when we launch our pan-EU music store soon.â€

In addition to Best Buy, the company said that iTunes gift cards are available at all Target stores, Apple retail stores and online at www.itunes.com.

Apple has also scheduled a press briefing today (Thursday) at one of its future mini store locations near Stanford University. Apple has yet to disclose the precise locations of the remaining 5 mini locations it will launch this Saturday but will likely use this press event to do so.

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6 Comments

buonrotto

said about 19 years ago

One of these days, someone's going to download the 500 millionth song, and it's going to have some unspeakable title or artist name.

a_greer

said about 19 years ago

How do they hire people for super-secret locations? do they move apple employees to the new city? If they did clasified ads then we would know what they are...

And if one of these mini stores comes to town, which i do not doubt, being so close to purdue, where would one find more info and apply?

xtremehkr

said about 19 years ago

I buy music from iTMS almost exclusively now. Occaisionally there are releases now that include a DVD that comes with the album. That is something that iTMS can't match currently. But 3eb and Incubus are the only two examples I can think of, and the DVD inclusion is usually limited anyway.

Now that I have an iPod, I truely understand what it is to be free from the limites of CDs. I can carry around so much music I wouldn't consider a CD player again. No need to change disks, or carry around CD holders.

I have 300+ CDs that eventually I want to get rid of completely, maybe just keep the covers and artwork. But until standard hard drive sizes get a lot bigger, there just isn't enough room to use Apple LossLess for every CD I have. I would have to have them in MP3 format as well because lossless eats up space on an iPod quickly.

To me, this has been the best innovation in music since the original walkman. I take my pod from the stereo at home to my car, use it in the gym. I got the attatchment for my mountain bike so I can listen while riding. It's the best thing ever.

Personal reccomendation: Marware iPod accessories are awesome, if you are going to use Marware, don't bother buying a Dock. It's a pain getting it in and out of the sleeve and the opening at the bottom of the sleeve works great. The sleeve protects the pod really well.

kim kap sol

said about 19 years ago

Is Apple going to do this every 500,000th download?

I can understand 50,000,000 and 100,000,000 being milestones, but 150,000,000? Relax, Apple. the next should maybe be 250,000,000, then 500,000,000, then 1,000,000,000.

tuttle

said about 19 years ago

Quote:

Originally posted by Xtremehkr
I buy music from iTMS almost exclusively now.

Just yesterday I was driving by the local Tower Records and realized I had been to a record store in over a year and a half. The place looked so alien to me.